Again? Utilities Are Wrong About the Costs of Pollution Safeguards

Posted on March 20, 2014, 9:28 am

The late, great Harold Ramis’s comedy “Groundhog Day” has become cultural shorthand for an event that endlessly repeats itself. This is summed up when Andie MacDowell asks Bill Murray, “Do you ever have déjà vu?”, and Murray responds, “Didn’t you just ask me that?”

When it comes to air-pollution reductions, coal and utility companies’ objections to government protections feel like “Groundhog Day” moments. Recently, these industries have again predicted that government pollution limits would result in skyrocketing electricity prices. However, their record as prognosticators is quite poor. Their past predictions of doom were wrong, and so are their current claims that the Environmental Protection Agency’s, or EPA’s, first carbon-pollution cuts for power plants would be disastrous.